World War I: Naval Technology, 1914 [Slide Show]

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USS Louisiana: Launched in June 1906. It appears large and impressive but this ship and others like it became obsolete six months later when the British ship HMS Dreadnought was launched. During World War I it was kept out of combat and served as a training ship. ... Image: Scientific American, July 18, 1914

Fighting Top: On U.S. battleships the “fighting top” was no longer a cumbersome armored mini-fort, but was used as an elevated platform for the “range-finder” (the long horizontal tube). Before radar this device was the most accurate way to determine the distance, or range, to a target... Image: Scientific American, February 14, 1914

USS Oklahoma: launched March 23, 1914, commissioned as a U.S. Navy battleship May 2, 1916. The ship, one of the most powerful afloat at the time, escorted convoys of Allied merchant ships during the war... Image: Scientific American Supplement, May 30, 1914

The Submarine: In 1914 the German navy had fewer than 10 ocean-going “U-boats” available. Here, a view of the interior of a German submarine as it is being manufactured, with internal machinery in place before the rear section was bolted on... Image: Scientific American Supplement, September 5, 1914

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The Invisible Enemy: This drawing shows how a submarine could lurk beneath the surface of the water, spying its targets with a periscope. Luckily for the allies, the submarine was a very slow vessel, especially underwater, and the periscope left a telltale wake if the boat was moving... Image: Scientific American, October 3, 1914

Rescue Idea: A submarine was a dangerous place to fight a war. Many were sunk by enemy action or through unlucky accident. One idea for saving a crew was this safety pod that could be launched in an emergency... Image: Scientific American, June 27, 1914

HMS Aboukir: An older armored cruiser, launched in 1900, retired in 1912, but pressed into service again when war broke out in 1914. The tragic fame of this ship was that it and two sister ships were sunk by a single German submarine on September 22, 1914... Image: Scientific American, October 3, 1914

Submarine Success: A single German submarine sank three older British armored cruisers on September 22, 1914, thus validating the concept of the submarine as an effective naval weapon. Here, the cover of this issue of Scientific American magazine gives us a somewhat colorful view of the event... Image: Scientific American, November 7, 1914

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Radical Design: ​The French battleship Normandie was launched in October 1914. Our image shows the design for the forward turret, mounting four 13.4-inch guns. The ship was sidelined because of other wartime needs; it was never finished and was eventually scrapped...

Battlecruiser SMS Moltke: ​Even a large, heavily armed warship had to be careful of torpedoes. On this German ship, torpedo nets could be unrolled down the side of the ship, where they trailed in the water. Here they are rolled up, providing a convenient seat for the crew...

When the First World War engulfed Europe in August 1914 it was widely believed that sea power would be a decisive factor. In the decade before the war, Germany had begun to expand their fleet of battleships to challenge the dominance of British naval power. This arms race has been cited as one of the causes of the war.

Sea power was indeed decisive in the war. But it wasn’t the large fleets of giant battleships that were significant. In fact, the only large naval battle in the war, Jutland, in 1916, had no clear winner, and even today remains controversial. The real power of the sea came from the fleets of merchant ships bringing vast amounts of weapons, ammunition and raw materials to France, Britain, Russia and Italy—and after the U.S. entered the war, fresh troops by the million.

Through this same sea power a blockade denied food and weaponry to Germany and Austria. Do not underestimate the effect of this blockade: by the end of the war up to half a million people in the Central Powers had died of starvation and malnutrition because of it. As we noted in an editorial shortly after the war began, “food is as essential to success as guns.” [November 7, 1914]

The decisive fight at sea became a battle between fleets of cargo vessels escorted by naval surface ships against fleets of submarines. Those tasked with winning the war were under no illusion as to the importance of winning this battle.

For a more comprehensive look at all the aspects of World War I, military, economic, social, technological, see the World War I archive package at www.ScientificAmerican.com/wwi

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